December 8, 2003
Information Design Watch
From Dynamic Diagrams
Consultants in Visual Logic
In This Issue:
INFORMATION DESIGN
- PowerPoint: Love it or Loathe it?
- Dead Links and Scholarly Research
- A Map of the Internet: Art or Information?
DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION
- The Cost of Netscape 4 Support
DYNAMIC DIAGRAMS NEWS AND EVENTS
- Visual Explanation on CIO Magazine Web Site
- Oxford Scholarship Online Goes Live
INFORMATION DESIGN
PowerPoint: Love it or Loathe it?
David Byrne has learned to love it:
"Although I began by making fun of the medium, I soon
realized I could actually create things that were beautiful. I could bend the
program to my own whim and use it as an artistic agent."
Edward Tufte believes it is an evil program:
"Power corrupts, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
Our take? By importing images and objects (including
Flash movies) we can make our presentations as customized as we like.
Even Tufte admits that PowerPoint "is a competent slide manager." Furthermore,
we have found PowerPoint quite useful for making wireframes (page
schematics). It is sufficiently flexible, accommodates notes, and everyone has
it (unlike Visio, for example), so clients can
circulate documents easily within their organizations.
Dead Links and Scholarly Research
When footnotes are URLS, footnotes disappear. Faster than
you may think:
"In research described in the journal Science
last month, the team looked at footnotes from scientific articles in three major
journals -- the New England Journal of Medicine, Science and
Nature -- at three months, 15 months and 27 months after publication.
The prevalence of inactive Internet references grew during those intervals from
3.8 percent to 10 percent to 13 percent."
Mentioned in the article is the digital object
identifier system known as DOI. This is a system we've seen
used effectively in our work for scientific publishers. The DOI web
site is
http://www.doi.org/.
A Map of the Internet: Art or Information?
The value of maps and
other visuals, even when generated by an information-gathering process, may be
more artistic than informational:
"A project to
create a comprehensive graphical representation of the Internet in just one
day...has already produced some eye-catching images."
The sheer complexity of some representations makes them hard to use
analytically. By using labeling or filtering mechanisms, one can begin
drawing information out of such complexity. In the instance of the Opte
project described above, an option to display IP addresses along a traceroute
(via a preset preference, or, for an interactive display,
by mouseclick), would begin to make the Internet map more
maplike. More information on the Opte project is at
http://www.opte.org/.
DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION
The Cost of Netscape 4 Support
"We've redesigned [our site].... There's only one
catch..."
The cheapest way to "support" older browsers is to
encourage users to upgrade. Unfortunately for Web publishers,
some institutional clients (such as universities or libraries) use older
browsers and may not want to incur the IT costs of upgrading all of their
users.
Instead, the costs of Netscape 4
support are hidden in the Web development process. Creating
standards-compliant code that can degrade in a readable
fashion on Netscape 4 is time-consuming and occasionally futile. The
hacks and work-arounds involved can draw out pre-launch testing, force extensive
debugging, and impair the code's overall compliance and flexibility. In the
future, expect Web developers to start charging a premium for Netscape 4
support.
DYNAMIC DIAGRAMS NEWS AND EVENTS
Visual Explanation on CIO Magazine Web Site
Our one-page visual explanation, "How Does Six Sigma
Work," accompanies CIO Magazine's online article on this corporate
quality program.
Oxford Scholarship Online Goes Live
Oxford Scholarship Online went live November 11,
2003. Containing the complete text of over 700 publications of Oxford
University Press, the site features our interface designs and information
architecture.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
To unsubscribe from this newsletter, please email
news@dynamicdiagrams.com with the word "unsubscribe" in the Subject line.
Dynamic Diagrams, Inc.
146 Clifford Street
Providence RI 02903
Tel: 401.223.1233
Fax: 401.223.1234
www.dynamicdiagrams.com